by Jack Vance
The dark cloud was not a cloud. Three black hulls settled upon the field, blotting out the light of afternoon. The music stopped short; from the public-address came a poignant cry: “Starmenters! Take—” The voice broke off in a gabble of words, and a new harsh voice spoke: “Keep your seats. Do not move or stir about.”
Glinnes nontheless took Farero’s arm, jerked her from the pedestal, down the ladder to the tank under the field. “What are you doing?” she gasped, pulling back in horror.
“I’m trying to save your life,” said Glinnes. “The starmenters would never leave you behind, and you’d never see your home again.”
The girl’s voice quavered. “Are we safe under here?”
“I wouldn’t think so. We’ll leave by the outlet sump. Hurry—it’s at the far end.”
They splashed through the water at best speed, under the ways, past the center moat. And now down the other ladder came Duissane, her face pinched and white with fear. Glinnes called to her, “Come along—we’ll leave by the sump; perhaps they’ll neglect to guard it.”
At the corner of the tank the water flowed out and down a flume into a narrow little waterway. Glinnes slid down the flume and jumped to a ledge of ill-smelling black mud. Next came Duissane, clutching the white gown about herself. Glinnes pulled her over to the mud-bank; she lost her footing and sat back into the muck. Glinnes could not restrain a grin. “You did that on purpose!” she cried in a throbbing voice. “I did not!”
“You did!”
“Whatever you say.”
Farero came down the flume; Glinnes caught her and pulled her over to the ledge. Duissane struggled to her feet. The three looked dubiously along the channel, which meandered out of sight under arching hushberries and pipwillows. The water seemed dark and deep; a faint scent of merling hung in the air. The prospect of swimming or even wading was unthinkable. Moored across the way was a crude little canoe, evidently the property of a couple of boys who had gained illicit entry to the field through the sump.
Glinnes clambered over the flume to the canoe, which was half full of water and wallowed precariously under his weight. He bailed out a few gallons of water, then dared delay no longer. He pushed the boat across the water. Duissane stepped in, then Farero, and the water rose almost to the gunwales. Glinnes handed the bailing bucket to Duissane, who went scowling to work. Glinnes paddled cautiously out into the waterway. Behind them, from the stadium, came the rasp of the announcement system: “Those folk in Pavilions A, B, C, and D will file to the south exits. Not all will be taken; we have an exact list of those we want. Be brisk and make no trouble; we’ll kill anyone who hinders us.”
Unreal! thought Glinnes. An outrageous avalanche of events: excitement, color, passion, music, and victory now fear and flight, with two sheirls. One hated him. The other, Farero, examined him from the side of her magnificent sea-blue eyes. Now she took the bucket from Duissane, who sulkily scraped the mud from her gown. What a contrast, thought Glinnes: Farero was rueful but resignedindeed, she probably preferred flight through the sump to nudity on the pedestal; Duissane obviously resented every instant of discomfort and seemed to hold Glinnes personally responsible.
The waterway curved. A hundred yards ahead gleamed Welgen Sound, with South Ocean beyond. Glinnes paddled more confidently; they had escaped the starmenters. A massive raid! And no doubt long planned for a time when all the wealthy folk of the prefecture came together. There would be captives taken for ransom, and girls taken for solace. The captives would return crestfallen and impoverished; the girls would never be seen again. The stadium vaults would yield at least a hundred thousand ozols and the treasures of the two teams would supply another thirty thousand, and even the Welgen banks might be plundered.
The waterway widened and meandered away from the shore across a wide mud flat pimpled with gas craters. To the east ran Welgen Spit, on the other side of which lay the harbor; to the west the shore extended into the late afternoon haze. Under the open sky Glinnes felt exposed—unreasonably so, he told himself; the starmenters could not now afford the time to pursue them, even should they deign to note the wallowing canoe. Farero had never ceased to bail. Water entered through several leaks, and Glinnes wondered how long the boat would stay afloat. The shuddering black slime of the mudflats was uninviting. Glinnes made for the nearest of the wooded islets which rose from the sound, a hummock of land fifty yards across.
The boat rocked upon an ocean swell and shipped water. Farero bailed as fast as possible, Duissane scooped with her hands, and they reached the islet just as the canoe sank under them.
With enormous relief Glinnes pulled the canoe up the little apron of beach. Even as he stepped ashore, the three starmenter ships rose into view. They slanted up into the southern sky and were gone, with all their precious cargo.
Farero heaved a sigh. “Except for you,” she told Glinnes, “I’d be aboard one of those ships.”
“I would also be up there, except for myself,” snapped Duissane.
Aha, thought Glinnes, here is a source for her annoyance: she feels neglected.
Duissane jumped ashore. “And what will we do out here?”
“Somebody will be along sooner or later. In the meantime, we wait.”
“I don’t care to wait,” said Duissane. “Once the boat is bailed out we can row back to shore. Must we sit shivering on this miserable little spot of land?”
“What else do you suggest? The boat leaks and the water swarms with merling. Still, I might be able to mend the leaks.”
Duissane went to sit on a chunk of driftwood. Whelm ships streaked in from the west, circled the area, and one dropped down into Welgen. “Too late, much too late,” said Glinnes. He bailed the canoe dry and wadded moss into such cracks as he could find. Farero came to watch him. She said, ”You were kind to me.”
Glinnes looked up at her.
“When you might have pulled the ring, you hesitated. You didn’t want to shame me.”
Glinnes nodded and went back to work on the boat.
“This may be why your sheirl is angry.”
Glinnes looked sideways toward Duissane, who sat scowling across the water. “She is seldom in a good humor.”
Farero said thoughtfully, “To be sheirl is a very strange experience; one feels the most extraordinary impulses… Today I lost, but the starmenters saved me. Perhaps she feels cheated.”
“She’s lucky to be here, and not aboard one of the ships.”
“I think that she is in love with you and jealous of me.”
Glinnes looked up in astonishment. “In love with me?” He returned another covert glance toward Duissane. “You must be wrong. She hates me. I’ve ample evidence of this.”
“It may well be. I am no expert in these affairs.”
Glinnes rose from his work, studied the canoe with gloomy dissatisfaction. “I don’t trust that moss—especially with the avness wind coming from the land.”
“Now that we’re dry it’s not unpleasant. Though my people must be worried, and I’m hungry.”
“We can find shore food,” said Glinnes. “Well have a fine supper—except that we lack fire. Still—a plantain tree grows yonder.”
Glinnes climbed the tree and tossed fruit down to Farero. When they returned to the beach, Duissane and the canoe were gone. She was already fifty yards distant, paddling for that waterway by which they had left the stadium. Glinnes gave a bark of sardonic laughter. “She is so in love with me and so jealous of you that she leaves us marooned together.”
Farero, flushing pink, said, “It is not impossible.”
For a period they watched the canoe. The offshore breeze gave Duissane difficulty. She stopped paddling and bailed for a moment or two; the moss evidently had failed to stanch the leaks. When again she began to paddle she rocked the canoe, and while clutching at the gunwale, lost the paddle. The offshore breeze blew her back, past the isle where Glinnes and Farero stood watching. Duissane ignored them.
Glinnes and Farero cl
imbed upon the central hummock and watched the receding canoe, wondering whether Duissane might be swept out to sea. She drifted among the islets and the canoe was lost to sight.
The two returned to the beach. Glinnes said, “If we had a fire we could be quite comfortable, at least for a day or so… I don’t care for raw sea-stuff.”
“Nor I,” said Farero.
Glinnes found a pair of dry sticks and attempted to rub up a fire, without success. He threw the sticks away in disgust. “The nights are warm, but a fire is pleasant.”
Farero looked here, there, everywhere but directly at Glinnes. “Do you think that we’ll be here so long?”
“We can’t leave till a boat comes past. It might be an hour; it might be a week.”
Farero spoke in something of a stammer. “And will you want to make love to me?”
Glinnes studied her for a moment, and reaching out, touched her golden hair. “You are beautiful beyond words. I would take joy in becoming your first lover.”
Farero looked away. “We are alone… My team today was defeated, and I won’t be a sheirl again. Still—” She stopped speaking, then pointed and said in a soft flat voice, “Yonder passes a boat.”
Glinnes hesitated. Farero made no urgent movement. Glinnes said reluctantly, “We must do something about silly Duissane and the canoe.” He went to the water’s edge and shouted. The boat, a power skiff driven by a lone fisherman, altered course, and presently Glinnes and Farero were aboard. The fisherman had come in from the open sea and had noticed no drifting canoe; quite possibly Duissane had gone ashore on one of the islets.
The fisherman took is boat around the end of the spit and into Welgen dock. Farero and Glinnes rode in a cab to the stadium. The driver had much to say regarding the starmenter raid. “—never an exploit to match it! They took the three hundred richest folk of the region and at least a hundred maidens, poor things, who’ll never be put up for ransom. The Whelm came too late. The starmenters knew precisely who to take and who to ignore. And they timed their operation to the second and were gone. They’ll all earn fortunes in ransom!”
At the stadium Glinnes bade Sheirl Farero a muted farewell. He ran to the dressing-room, slipped off his Tanchinaro uniform, and resumed his ordinary clothes.
The cab carried him back to the dock, where Glinnes hired a small runabout. He drove around the spit, out into Welgen Sound. The flat light of avness painted sea, sky, islets and shore in pallid and subtle colors to which no name could be applied. The silence seemed surreal; the gurgle of water under the keel was almost an intrusion.
He passed the islet where he had originally landed with Farero and Duissane, and went beyond, out into the area where the canoe had drifted. He circled the first of the islets but saw no sign of either canoe or Duissane. The next three islets were also vacant. The sea spread vast and calm beyond the three little islets yet to be investigated. On the second of these he spied a slender figure in a white gown, waving frantically.
When Duissane recognized the man who drove the boat, she abruptly stopped waving. Glinnes leapt ashore and pulled the boat up the beach. He secured the bow line to a crooked root, then turned and looked about. The flat low line of the mainland was dim in the inconclusive light. The sea heaved slow and supple, as if constricted under a film of silk. Glinnes looked at Duissane, who had maintained a cold silence. “What a quiet place. I doubt if even the merlings swim out this far.”
Duissane looked at the boat. “If you came out to get me, I am now ready to leave.”
“There’s no hurry,” said Glinnes. “None whatever. I brought bread and meat and wine. We can bake plantains and quorls26 and maybe a curset.27 We’ll have a picnic while the stars come out.”
Duissane compressed her lips petulantly and looked off toward the shore. Glinnes stepped forward. He stood only afoot away from her-as close as he had ever been. She looked up at him without warmth, her tawny-gray eyes shifting, or so it seemed to Glinnes, through a dozen moods andemotions. Glinnes bent his head, and putting an arm around her shoulders, kissed her lips, which were cold and unresponsive. She pushed him away with a thrust of her hands, and seemed suddenly to recover her voice. “You’re all alike, you Trills! You reek with cauch; your brain is a single lecherous gland. Do you aspire only to turpitude? Have you no dignity, no self-respect?”
Glinnes laughed. “Are you hungry?”
“No. I have a dinner engagement and I will be late unless we leave at once.”
“Indeed. Is that why you stole the canoe?”
“I stole nothing. The canoe was as much mine as yours. You seemed content to ogle that insipid Karpoun girl. I wonder that you’re not still at it.”
“She feared that you would be offended.”
Duissane raised her eyebrows high. “Why should I think twice, or even once, about your conduct? Her concern embarrasses me.”
“It is no great matter,” said Glinnes. “I wonder if you would gather firewood while I fetch plantains?” Duissane opened her mouth to refuse, then decided that such an act was self-defeating. She found a few dry twigs, which she tossed haughtily down upon the beach. She scrutinized the boat, which was pulled far up on the beach, and beyond her strength to float. The starting key had been removed from the lock.
Glinnes brought plantains, kindled a fire, dug up four fine quorls, which he cleaned, rinsed in the sea and set to baking with the plantains. He brought bread and meat from the boat, and spread a cloth on the sand. Duissane watched from a distance.
Glinnes opened the flask of wine and offered it to Duissane.
“I prefer to drink no wine.”
“Do you intend to eat?”
Duissane touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. “And then what do you plan?”
“We will relax on the beach and star-watch, and who knows what else?”
“Oh you are a despicable person; I want nothing to do with you. Untidy and gluttonous, like all the Trills.”
“Well, at least I’m not worse. Settle yourself; we’ll eat and watch the sunset.”
“I’m hungry, so I’ll eat,” said Duissane. “Then we must go back. You know how Trevanyi feel about indiscriminate amorousness. Also, never forget—I am the Tanchinaro sheirl, and a virgin!”
Glinnes made a sign to indicate that these considerations were of no great cogency. “Changes occur in all our lives.”
Duissane stiffened in outrage. “Is this how you plan to soil the team’s sheirl? What a scoundrel you are, who so sanctimoniously insisted upon purity and then told such vicious lies about me.”
“I told no lies,” declared Glinnes. “I never even told the truth-how you and your family robbed me and left me for the merlings, and how you laughed to see my lying for dead.”
Duissane said somewhat feebly, “You got only what you deserved.”
“I still owe your father and your brothers a knock or two,” laid Glinnes. “As for you, I am of two minds. Eat, drink wine, fortify yourself.”
“I have no appetite. None whatever. I do not think it just that a person should be so ill-treated.”
Glinnes gave no answer and began to eat.
Presently Duissane joined him. “You must remember,” she said, “that if you carry out your threat, you will have betrayed not only me but all your Tanchinaros, and befouled them as well. Then, you will be faced with an accounting of another sort, from my family. They will dog you to the end of time; never will you know a moment’s peace. Thirdly, you will gain all my contempt. And for what? The relief of your gland. How can you use the word ‘love’ when you really plan revenge? And this of a most paltry kind. As if I were an animal, or something without emotion. Certainly use me, if you wish, or kill me, but bear in mind my utter contempt for all your disgusting habits. Furthermore—”
“Woman,” roared Glinnes, “be kind enough to shut your mouth. You have blighted the day and the evening as well. Eat your meal in silence and we will return to Welgen.” Scowling, Glinnes hunched down upon the sand. He ate planta
ins, quorls, meat, and bread; he drank two flasks of wine, while Duissane watched from the corner of her eye, a peculiar expression on her face, half-sneer, half-smirk.
When he had eaten, Glinnes leaned back against a hammock and mused for a time upon the sunset. With absolute fidelity the colors were reflected in the sea, except for an occasional languid black cusp in the lee of a swell.
Duissane sat in silence, arms clasped around her knees.
Glinnes lurched to his feet and thrust the boat into the water. He signaled Duissane. “Get in.” She obeyed. The boat returned across the sound, around the point of the spit, and up to the Welgen dock.
A large white yacht floated beside the jetty, which Glinnes recognized to be the property of Lord Gensifer. Lights glowed from the portholes, signifying activity aboard.
Glinnes looked askance at the yacht. Would Lord Gensifer be hosting a party tonight, after the starmenter raid? Strange. But then, the ways of the aristocrats always had been beyond his comprehension. Duissane, to his amazement, jumped from the boat and ran to the yacht. She climbed the gangplank and vanished into the salon. Glinnes heard Lord Gensifer’s voice: “Duissane, my dear young lady, whatever—” The remainder of his sentence was muffled.
Glinnes shrugged and returned the boat to the rental depot As he walked back down the dock, Lord Gensifer hailed him; from the yacht. “Glinnes! Come aboard for a moment,: there’s a good fellow!”
Glinnes sauntered indifferently up the gangway. Lord Gensifer clapped him on the back and conducted him into the salon. Glinnes saw a dozen folk in fashionable garments, apparently aristocratic friends of Lord Gensifer, and also Akadie, Marucha, and Duissane, who now wore over her sheer white gown a red cloak, evidently borrowed from one of the ladies present. “Here then is our hero!” declared Lord Gen-sifer. “With cool resource he saved two lovely sheirls from the sarmenters. In our great grief we at least can be thankful for this boon.”
Glinnes looked in wonder about the salon. He felt as if he were living a particularly absurd dream. Akadie, Lord Gensifer, Marucha, Duissane, himself—what a strange mix of people!
